If there’s one thing tech enthusiasts love more than an underdog, it’s an underdog with high specs. The Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu Edition is just such a device. It’s powered by the same 14nm Samsung Exynos processor as the flagship Galaxy S6. It has a 21-megapixel camera with laser-assisted phase-detect autofocus and a Hi-Fi audio chip from ESS. Clad in an aluminum unibody shell and sporting an AMOLED display, it’s as modern and good looking as any smartphone out here at Mobile World Congress. But it runs Ubuntu, and that makes it too much of an underdog.
With non-iOS and non-Android smartphone operating systems dropping like flies left and right, it’s commendable that Canonical is still trying with Ubuntu. Too bad that even on such powerful hardware, and after years of development and promises, Ubuntu is still slow and cumbersome on smartphones.
I like mine – I don’t find it too slow or clunky, I like the interface more than any other phone. The main problem is lack apps and lack of proxy support.
I do like having a proper terminal I do like not having to root the thing.
When I tried using ubuntu touch on my nexus 4 for a couple of weeks the poor terminal was one of the things that really ticked me off. Again it is due the decision to not allow any kind of multitasking. The terminal can’t keep anything running when switching apps. That means my primary use-case, running an ssh-session, is completely borked. I don’t see much use of a terminal to do stuff locally on the phone itself, so I wonder whatever use there is for it other than a novelty. And it does not have any special keyboard support either, meaning no ‘tab’ button. Using a shell without ‘tab’ is really painful. No arrow buttons either, and not even a CTRL button, meaning many programs are unusable (you couldn’t even quit the ‘nano’ editor until they added a menu item for entering ‘ctrl-X’, but nano has a lots of other ctrl combos which can not be entered)
For instance ‘connectbot’ + ‘hackers keyboard’ on android is so much better for the ssh usecase than this ‘real terminal’ that it’s not even funny. And when you open the terminal on a sailfish device you don’t ever want to see the ubuntu toy again.
What..? Last time I used the terminal there was a special button menu for all common CTRL+C/CTRL+X/CTRL+D etc combinations and other needed keys including Tab:
https://developer.ubuntu.com/static/devportal_uploaded/c1d70a82-7441…
Edited 2016-02-24 09:12 UTC
I know it has a menu with SOME ctrl combos, but since there is no button for only ctrl it means, as I said, that only some combos are possible. If it’s not there in the limited menu then you can’t compose it yourself. It’s not fun to start some program in an ssh session to a server and then realize that you can’t even quit the program because some key combo can’t be entered. I don’t understand why they are doing their own limited toy terminal instead of using the excellent fingerterm which does everything needed. (apart from multitasking of course which is not allowed on ubuntu)
Tab is there, yes. I forgot about that.
Another missing use case is ssh port forwarding. Or you can forward a port just fine, but then it closes the session as soon as you switch to eg the browser to use the forwarded port.
Jesus. And they call this a real operating system? Even Apple, who really tried to stick to the no multitasking crap, had to give up and allow some multitasking in the end. And this being GNU/Linux based! Do they not realize who their core market will be?
Some good points, I do use SSH with the terminal but close the connection when I’ve finished. I tend to use lot of the same commands and scroll through them.
The keyboard does have extra keys including TAB, in fact it has a menu of Keys for CTRL (CTRL+A CTRL+C etc), Scroll, Function Keys, common commands (find chmod etc) and the Nano control keys. All of this is on the top left of the keyboard
I know about the menu, but my point is that it’s a limited menu with only some options. If you need anything else then it’s impossible.
Real terminal support needs it’s own full keyboard, not the standard phone keyboard made for chatting + a menu with some ‘often used keys’. I think maybe ubuntu touch has no suport for custom keyboards, that would be the only possible explanation for the missing buttons and the menu.
Maybe they are adding that someday, and I still hope for real multitasking when the os grows up. Surely they are going to allow several windowed programs to run at the same time on a converged device? They couldn’t possible not, or could they??
Thom, why are you so eager to see all non-mainstream platforms dead? True, Windows Phone, Ubuntu and Sailfish OS might not be as appealing to imaginary straw consumer as Android and iOS are, but these underdog platforms have their strong sides, and there are people to whom these platforms are really more appropriate. Being one of such people I just can’t understand the line of thinking behind that joyful tone you pick to write about any trouble these underdog platforms are having.
For some stupid reason tech people developed some unexplicable tolerance towards huge centralized projects. These days it is somehow fine that a crappy pseudo-spec that W3C calls a standard with no apparent reason prevents development of new web rendering engines. It is somehow acceptable social interaction in internet is tied to handful of walled gardens with no interoperability whatsoever. Nobody sees any harm in the fact that instant messaging industry is overtaken by overly centralized spyware with no real benefits over decade[s]-old open technologies. And it is also somehow fine that there are only two major mobile operating systems.
Ironically, although this site is called OSNews, it never published even most shallow review of Ubuntu Phone, which is – guess what – an OS.
I have limited funds. We don’t get freebies. Virtually every review you see here is of phones and equipment we buy ourselves. Remember that massive Palm article? That thing cost hundreds of euros in equipment alone to write – let alone the months of time I put into research and writing, time I couldn’t spend on actual work.
A lot of people seem to think phones just grow on trees – they do not. They cost real euros that I have to cough up myself, that I have to work for. I have to make choices on what to buy and not to buy, and as far as alternative equipment goes, last year was spent on Jolla’s phone and tablet (which I still don’t have).
Nothing comes for free.
I gave mine away, but I would have mailed it to you before giving it away if you had asked. Why don’t ask users for the hardware you want to review?
Shipping in europe isn’t that expensive, you would just have to pay the return shipping.
You don’t have Ubuntu-based phone, and you can’t easily get one. What you have instead is a strong opinion about the platform you have never seen in action. See, most journalists out there don’t have spare money they can easily waste on Ubuntu phone either. That’s why they don’t comment about its performance or other aspects they can’t make their own opinion of. As a rule of thumb, having opinion about something you never really studied is a bad habbit for people in general, but for journalists it is yet worse.
Next, Jolla really fucked up the tablet situation, and there are no excuses for that. But how does it magically make Sailfish OS bad? You repeatedly insisted on Sailfish OS being buggy and Android emulation there being slow, and readers repeatedly pointed out that it is just not the case. You have a Jolla phone, why not switch it on and see for yourself before writing about it?..
The last but not the least: I would also ask for a prooflink for “burnt consumers” of Microsoft/Nokia, Ubuntu or Jolla phones. Not the people who didn’t get theirdevice, but people who got their hardware, used it, found it worse then average Android device on the market and “burned” (whatever that is supposed to mean). Photos welcome as well. (I don’t ask for disappointed Windows Phone user because for some reason it is commonly believed that there was nothing wrong in expecting high-quality WP apps materializing out of nowhere. I don’t want to fight this wind mill any more.)
P.S.: Thom, I really don’t mean to offend you, or to defend Canonical or Jolla. I just want to bring your attention to the fact that OSNews articles increasingly rely on opinion and decreasingly – on real world facts. I am aware that media industry standards are indeed alarmingly low these days, but OSNews used to be far better in this regard. It doesn’t have to degrade this way.
It’s powered on as we speak. I use it all the time to keep up with what’s going on. I don’t care what other people say; I care about my own experiences. And my own experience with Sailfish is that it it buggy, has barely any native applications worth mentioning, and that Android application emulation is crash-prone, buggy, and slow. A cheap €150 Android phone runs Android applications better than Sailfish does.
I know people tend to get emotionally invested in small platforms, but I don’t give a rat’s ass about that. I’m here to be honest, because that’s what matters. Jolla has been positioning Sailfish as a true, on-par alternative to iOS and Android for two years now, and I will judge them as such. You can’t be that grandiose as a company and then expect me to continue treating you like an enthusiast’s product.
Jolla fucked up way beyond just the tablet. They fucked up big time when instead of focusing on enthusiasts, they saw dollar signs and started focusing on market share and rapid expansion, thinking they could take on iOS and Android. That’s when things started to go horribly, horribly wrong. Virtually all of the problems I listed in my original review have NOT been addressed, despite countless promises and endless “we’re working on it, honest!”.
Sailfish itself has not meaningfully improved in the two years since the introduction of the phone – and I can know, since I was one of the first people to own the phone, and probably the only one who actually did an in-depth review based on several months of use, and since I’ve been using it constantly since that time.
I’m happy for you that you’re happy with where Sailfish is at today – that’s great! – but I’m not. I’m sick of the endless unfulfilled promises, huge errors in judgement, terrible lack of business sense, complete misunderstanding of who their target audience is, and lack of serious development on the key parts of the platform that matter.
They wanted to play with the big girls/boys, and that means you’ll be treated as such.
Apparently I misjudged your comments, and I am really sorry for that. I still strongly disagree with most of them, but if they really come from day-to-day experience with Sailfish OS, they are perfectly fine. Please accept my apologies.
Edited 2016-02-24 13:15 UTC
Thom, you are the one spreading misinformation. That Ubuntu Phone is a real phone. If you say it lack apps, so what? A smartphone that can browse the web, text/sms, messaging and call is already a real and genuine phone comparable to other smartphones.
Number of apps is irrelevant.
Sadly, apps are relevant. Maybe not to you, but to the vast majority of smartphone users out there they certainly are. Even I, though I don’t need many, have some apps such as Uber that I refuse to do without and any platform which doesn’t have the apps I rely upon is a nonstarter for me. I suspect most people feel the same way. If I didn’t use apps, I’d simply have a feature phone.
Someone, anyone, who owns a Ubuntu phone could write a review as submit it to OSNews.
Easier to complain and hope someone else does it than to put in real effort oneself I guess.
You did not get my point, I guess because I did not make myself clear enough. Lack of Ubuntu mobile review is not an issue per se. The issue is that news item expresses an opinion about something that the auther never had his hands on.
Anyone with a Nexus 4 or 5 could write a review of the OS itself, however it would be colored by the hardware experience and wouldn’t necessarily be a proper review. As Thom indicated above, actual Ubuntu Touch devices are expensive, and not everyone has the deep pockets required to buy a ton of phones for review. Chances are, those of us who do have that kind of money to throw around are likely spending their time making said money, and don’t have time to write a review for their favorite corner of the web.
Thom wasn’t telling it like it is, he was just telling it like someone else told it.
And that’s the problem as I see it. Marketing a phone is like marketing a candidate. Anyone who expects Ubuntu OS to compete with iOS or Android, brand spanking new to the game and on a comparatively shoe-string budget, will be disappointed. However, there are already features offered by “Ubuntu OS” that are utterly unavailable on Android or iOS. It all begins with Ubuntu being open source, not locked down, not a walled garden, and capable of true convergence. This is **huge** — for what portion of the consumer market I don’t know — but Ubuntu OS is a different product and while it’s behind in some areas it’s already leapfrogging its competition in others. I think it has to sell itself on its differences, not its similarities (and shortcomings therein).
The review that only compares “Ubuntu OS” to what Android and iOS already do, is a piss poor review in my book. Sure, it may not be as fast or have as many apps, but let’s talk about what it *can* do that Android and iOS can’t.
Edited 2016-02-23 20:47 UTC
Uh, no. I’ve been following this industry for god knows how long, and I know damn well how to make up my own mind.
This is an incredibly insipid insult that denigrates well over a decade’s worth of work I’ve done here. What a terrible thing to say to someone. I hope you feel better now.
Bluegh.
No offense, but your basically saying you made up your mind without having ever used the product first hand. Have you even tried using it on a Nexus 4?
I really don’t think he was trying to insult you – what he said was true. You were writing based on 2nd hand knowledge of the product, which is tinted by whatever the author’s focus was. I certainly won’t argue that Ubuntu Phone is fast, its not (relatively speaking) – but it does have some interesting and unique qualities that get glossed over in a short 5 paragraph write up mostly focused on how slow it is. Which is all I think the person you replied to was saying in the first place…
I have actually used Ubuntu Touch on a Nexus 7. Not a phone so its quite a bit different. Its slow as a glacier on that thing, but I have no idea how it performs on the Meizu PRO 5, which is an entirely different animal. This guys review just says it slow compared to Android and iOS, which doesn’t surprise me, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t reach being usable yet. My old Palm Pre was slow compared to phones of the day, but it was more than usable (and had unique features I liked quite a lot)…
Anyway, thats my 2 cents. I think your overreacting a bit is all.
Wait, I mixed two stories up – I thought this was the Jolla thread. Totally my fault. Sorry.
That being said, yes, he is totally right, of course – in this case, I’m totally just basing this particular case on what others are writing. Not all of it, though – I do actually have experience with Ubuntu Phone, just not enough to write a review (and I only write reviews like this after at least four weeks of exclusive use – none of this “looked at it for three days” BS).
In any event, total overreaction on my end for this story. I thought we were talking about my claim the window’s closed for Sailfish. Sorry again.
Ha. Ok, that makes sense. That did seem like an odd reaction from you…
When they released the Meizu 4 Pro with Ubuntu, I was interested but 16Gb no SD card isn’t great. This one has 32GB.
369 usd is about 310 euro. At the high end of what I am prepared to pay for a phone but if the camera works well, a podcast program, a music player and some VLC, it good be good enough for me. I don’t use social media so beyond a few basic apps I should be ok.
This is probably the only phone left where the user has total control without interference from big companies and I wonder where this OS is in the privacy wars. Can I encrypt the home directory like I can on Linux?
“Nothing comes for free’ – Thom_Holwerda
Are you breathing ? How much do you pay for the air you breath ?
Good will also comes free from those who have it. FOSS companies and developers may have their costs, but the primary engine that drives them is absolutely free: good will to build a better future.
And no amount of money we can spend has more value than human colaboration (instead of competition) and good will.
You took that last line way too literally!
Perhaps the readers here with Ubuntu phones could chip in with some comments about how they are faring with their phones?
The OS itself is pretty great (notification pull-down menu, app switching etc), but I had to switch back to Android due to lack of apps (surprise, surprise)
This is one refreshing comment. Thanks.
I don’t believe Ubuntu is slow and clunky on Meizu Pro 5 because it’s nice even on my Bq E4.5. And Meizu Pro 5 >>>> Bq E4.5.
I don’t really want to run Ubuntu Phone OS, but this looks like good hardware for running other alternative OSes. Are they making this phone an open platform, similar to the Nexus line? (Obviously, they would need to sell enough units to make it a good target.)